An ample supply of hot water has long been an indispensable need for residential and commercial uses. Since the cost of energy has risen dramatically in recent years, it has become increasingly desirable to find an economical but effective way of heating water.
Various devices have been proposed to fill the need for supplying economical hot water. However, these devices have had shortcomings of one type or another. For example, some devices continue to use fossil fuels, electricity, or other forms of energy which are relatively expensive and which continue to increase in cost. Furthermore, such forms of energy require some sort of transmission lines or other type of transportation to convey them to the point of use. In other devices, which employ free energy such as solar energy, the devices have either been ineffective to supply the necessary heat to the water or other fluids to be heated, or have been so large, complex or costly as to make their use impractical. Still other devices fail to provide a system for retaining the heat once it has been collected or fail to provide their components with adequate protection from the elements, especially from freezing weather.